Pogacar attacks in the first big mountain stage of the Tour de France and takes back the yellow jersey

Full of confidence, Pogacar reached a speed of almost 90 km/h on the descent from the 2,642-meter-high Col du Galibier and increased his lead over his biggest rival, defending champion Jonas Vingegaard, to almost a full minute.

“That was more or less the plan and we executed it really well,” said Pogacar after his 12th stage win in the Tour. “I wanted to hit hard today. I know this stage really well. I’ve trained here for many days. It felt like a home stage.”

“I had confidence at the beginning, I had good legs and I had to try. I know the descent, but I was a bit surprised when I saw a wet road in the first corners. That was a bit scary.”

The roads were slippery from the melting snow banks.

Vingegaard did his best to limit the damage but finished 37 seconds behind on stage four as the race returned to France after the opening stages in Italy.

The Galibier lived up to expectations as the Tour’s first decisive battleground, with previous leader Richard Carapaz being dropped on the grueling climb.

Pogacar has shown similar performances throughout the season.

He won four of the five races he entered before the Tour, collecting 14 victories in 31 days of racing – including prestigious trophies at the Giro d’Italia, Strade Bianche and Liège-Bastogne-Liège.

Pogacar, who also wore yellow after stage two, is aiming for a rare Giro-Tour double after dominating the Italian Grand Tour in May. He is also seeking his third Tour title after victories in 2020 and 2021. He has finished second to Vingegaard in the last two years.

The last rider to win the Giro and the Tour in the same year was Marco Pantani in 1998.

Tour rookie Remco Evenepoel, the Spanish Vuelta and 2022 world champion, finished second in the stage, 35 seconds behind Pogacar. Juan Ayuso, Pogacar’s teammate in the United Arab Emirates, was third with the same time.

Primoz Roglic finished fourth and Vingegaard fifth.

Overall, Pogacar gained a lead of 45 seconds over Evenepoel and 50 seconds over Vingegaard.

“It’s never nice to lose time, but to be honest I expected bigger time differences after four stages,” said Vingegaard.

While Pogacar’s UAE Team Emirates squad set a fast pace on the climb, only Vingegaard and a handful of other riders could keep up by the time they reached the top of the Galibier.

Then Pogacar attacked with 800 metres to go and gained a lead of about 10 seconds over Vingegaard at the summit. With about 20 kilometres of descent left to the finish, Pogacar extended his lead over the more cautious Vingegaard, who crashed at high speed in April, breaking his collarbone and ribs and suffering a collapsed lung.

Vingegaard reached the summit in second place and Evenepoel in third place.

“We must not forget that (Vingegaard) had a very bad crash three months ago and he may still be lacking that last bit of confidence on the descent,” said Grischa Niermann, the sports director of Vingegaard’s Visma team. “Cycling races are also downhill, not just uphill.”

At the finish line, Pogacar had plenty of time to beat his chest and raise his fists in celebration.

The route from Pinerolo, Italy, to Valloire was relatively short at 140 kilometers (87 miles), but with two category two climbs to Sestriere and Montgenevre before the grueling climb to the Galibier, it was the first real test of the Tour.

The Galibier – the first hors catégorie (outside category) climb of the year – was 23 kilometres long and had an average gradient of 5.1%. The most difficult sections came near the summit, where the road reached a gradient of almost 10%.

In front of the summit there is a monument to the Tour de France founder Henri Desgrange.

Big climbs like the Galibier usually come later in the race, but organizers planned the start in Italy and the finish in Nice to avoid clashing with the Olympic Games in Paris.

Wednesday’s stage 5 is a much less demanding 177-kilometre stage from Saint-Jean-De-Maurienne to Saint-Vulbas, with two fourth-category climbs before a flat finish that could end in a sprint. There’s another flat stage on Thursday before the first individual time trial of the race on Friday.

AP Cycling: https://apnews.com/hub/cycling